


deeper than any mirror

by ThatAj



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types
Genre: 1 time Elio and Oliver do not kiss, 1+5 Things, 5 times they do, 5+1 Things, Fix-It, M/M, POV First Person, POV Oliver, except reverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:13:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23696005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatAj/pseuds/ThatAj
Summary: One time Elio and Oliver did not kiss and five times they did. Set five years after the movie and begins when Elio and Oliver run into each other in New York City. The story of how they find their way back together.
Relationships: Oliver/Elio Perlman
Comments: 71
Kudos: 163
Collections: Fandom Trumps Hate 2020





	deeper than any mirror

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Binary_Sunset](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Binary_Sunset/gifts).



_“If it's true that you have to love yourself before you can love someone else, then I suppose a certain self-regard must've kept me above water during my decade of drowning alone. But I think that in my case it was the other way—that I learned to love myself because someone else finally loved me. Seeing myself whole in another man's eyes, deeper than any mirror, and neither of us looking away because there's so much lost time to make up for.”_  
Paul Monette, Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story, 1992

August, 1988

I saw those dark curls again while I was sitting at a cafe on the corner of 97th and Columbus. Over the years I had come to think of it as my cafe. I preferred to grade papers, plan lectures, edit manuscripts, while sipping on coffee so bad that one couldn’t even claim it to properly be the stuff and therefore had surpassed offensive to the point that it was another beverage altogether. One step short of mainlining caffeine directly into my veins. That day I was reviewing my syllabi for the upcoming semester, using the cafe’s air conditioning rather than my own.

The cafe is no longer there, in its place stands a Whole Foods, and across the street is a Starbucks, whose beverages served under the name of “coffee” are offensive. The building where I had moved in a hurry, the only affordable place with a vacancy and close enough to Columbia University, has since turned in condominiums. But at the time it was a cheap place for young families, retirees, and a few artists who had studios there. A cheap place for white families, I should say. I didn’t think of it that way at the time, but I tried to ignore so much then because paying attention was so costly. It threatened to undo my very being. The neighborhood is quieter now, the Frederick Douglass Housing Projects still stand, but on sticky summer nights, like this day would become, no one drags beach chairs and boomboxes out to the sidewalk to blast the beats of the islands from where they and their families come anymore.

I recognized the curls instantly, even though it had been five years since I had seen them, just a little longer than the last time I heard the voice that would spill from the slightly crooked, bubble gum pink lips, living below them. The voice that whispered his name which was mine which had, without a doubt, become his again. I no longer had any claim to it, if I ever did.

There was not much I did those days without a great deal of thought. Every detail painstakingly mapped out, nothing left to chance. With my career, a few years away from tenure, it made sense. With my personal life, well, it made sense to sacrifice that for my career. Life could wait.

So to call out his name, which had been my name once, without a second thought, perhaps before a first thought beyond registering those curls, should have surprised me and the absence of a surprise barely registered, much like the absence of the life I had told myself I had wanted.

“Elio!” My voice was hoarse. On a Saturday I had probably only spoken to the waitress and then only to say “the usual” meaning a tuna-salad-easy-on-the-mayo-on-rye, ice water, and coffee, keep the refills coming.

The curls swung around, eyes widening with surprise and then narrowing upon recognition. I saw him take a deep breath, a full body movement. The intervening years had filled him out somewhat, but he was still slender for a man. He said a few words to his companion who was paying the tab, and ambled over. If my memory had not known every inch of him as well as it did, I would have recognized him from his stride alone.

“Oliver.” It was a statement of fact less so a greeting. I began to stand up but he shook his head and slid into the booth across the table from me.

If I had allowed myself to imagine seeing him again, it would not have been under these circumstances. But my mind, the most dangerous part of me, was kept on a tight leash, not permitted to go off exploring. Except in my dreams, but my dreams were memories.

“Are you,” I paused to clear my throat, “Visiting the City?” I gestured vaguely in the direction of the cash register where his companion had stood. Whoever it was, and I sternly reminded myself I had no right to have any feelings about whomever Elio might be spending his time with. Surely I had not wanted him to be entirely alone these past five years, longer if the absence of any imagined reunion shaped reality. I had simply not let myself think about it.

Elio paused, a perplexed look passed across his face for a moment before he shared, “No, I’m starting Julliard. D.M.A. in music composition.”

“Elio! Congratulations! That’s very impressive. Your parents must be thrilled.”

“My - my parents?” He choked out. “Yes, they’re happy. They want me to be happy.” Happiness was never much on my radar then, which is incredible to realize now, how far I had traveled since that hedonic summer then and from then to now. To focus on his parents’ happiness and neglect to ask about his own betrayed more about me than either of us realized. “But, surely, surely you must be in touch with them?”

It was my turn to stammer. Something that happened rarely. One who plans each word carefully so as not to expose any part of himself that isn’t acceptable - whether to others or to himself, a question never allowed to bubble to the surface - does not have the occasion to stammer. “No, I - I haven’t spoken to them since, since I called them to tell them the wedding was cancelled.”

That task had fallen to me. It had been my fault after all. Most of the guests I had written to, my careful script expressing regret at any inconvenience caused, but the vagaries of international post and the timeliness of the message had required me to telephone the Perlmans at their Milan apartment. And I had assumed, incorrectly I was quickly learning from the look that painted itself across Elio’s face, that the news had been passed on.

“The wedding was…” He swallowed and I worked to keep my eyes on his and not the movement of his Adam’s apple or the tip of his tongue wetting his lips. “Cancelled?” His voice had deepened in the intervening years but the word “cancelled” was spoken with a boyish surprise that took me back to when I knew him and had allowed myself to be known.

“Yes,” I replied, closing my eyes for a moment. “It wouldn’t have been...honest.” That was the most accurate explanation I had given anyone. Only Professor and Mrs. Perlman of all the guests had received the same one.

When I opened my eyes again, Elio’s expression had softened. “Oh,” he whispered and looked at me more closely. Later, much later, he would tell me he had been scared to really see me, scared of stirring the same feelings I had been scared to stir, although for different reasons. “You’re...thinner.” I knew I was. I still ran daily, a necessity to sweep the sticky cobwebs of unwanted thoughts and desires from my mind, to keep it focused on my singular reason for being, my work, but I hardly ate. My senses dulled, food tasting little more than its texture. “Are you well?”

I immediately recognized the language Elio was speaking. It was the language of the time. I swallowed against bile that threatened to rise in my throat and glanced around. There was no one here who knew me. It was why I lived here and not amongst my colleagues in Morningside Heights. It was why I had moved from the East Side classic six as soon as my engagement had been called off. Still I whispered, “No. No, I’m not...like _that._ ”

“I see,” Elio’s voice was steely. He slid out from the booth and stood. I got up as well and this time he made no move to stop me.

“It was good to see you, Elio.”

“Oliver,” he said simply, again more a statement of fact than a farewell, and held out his hand. It reminded me of when we first met and it felt like a fitting end. A circle made whole. I clasped his slender hand in mine and shook it.

I went back to my apartment shortly after that, not being able to bear to occupy the same space, breathe the same air Elio had. Keeping parts of myself hidden from anyone’s view, especially my own, was much like keeping a large beach ball underwater, it took constant effort. I kept myself to a strict schedule those days, a midday nap unheard of unless I was ill with the flu, yet I fell asleep on my bed listening to my answering machine with a message from Ann, or was it Carol? There were so few of them and yet they all blend together in my memory.

October 1988

I was a man of habit in those days. Fearful that if given any slack in the rope that tethered me to this world, this life, I would hang myself with it. Weekdays and Sundays I ran around the Reservoir, twice, but every Saturday, the day I gave myself off from professional work to run errands, clean the apartment, and do laundry, and I gave myself a longer run. I jogged across the street to Central Park and ran the long loop, entering through the gate situated between a playground and The Pool. I went early before the drive was busy with bicycles and people walking three or four across, usually seeing only other runners.

Even on my way out of the park, it was usually fairly empty. And so I was surprised to find someone sitting on the bench by The Pool where I usually stretched. Surprised even more so that it was Elio. I saw him as I approached and gave serious thought to passing him by as I did not know what to do with the emotions stirred in me by the sight of him in slender acid wash jeans and striped shirt under a windbreaker, scribbling into a notebook. I wanted to do what I did with other emotions I wasn’t sure how to handle, ignore it completely until it passed. They always did, even if they returned later, an ebb and flow, a wave, as far below the surface as I could manage to push it, which I had learned to ride as though I was a surfer, biding my time until the water was calm again, focused always always always at a point ahead, the next goal, the next task.

But I hesitated, for it was Elio after all. There is simply no choice for me when it comes to Elio.

I hesitated and he called to me. My emotions, as alive and rebellious as they felt, were only internal experiences, rather than flesh and blood with a mind and free will of his own. I walked to him, still breathless and sweaty from the exertion of the run.

Then, that day, I felt like I was moving under the spell of some magic, and now I know that was the case, that what exists between me and Elio is far greater and more powerful than an ordinary type of love, as overwhelming as it feels at times, to be pulled under by the riptide, the more I have given into it, the less I fight against it, the more I’m drawn home, like sea turtles returning to the place of their birth to, themselves, give birth, carried along by the ocean rather than fighting it, not understanding but trusting.

But that day it felt like I was tugged toward him by my heart, an organ that I had long relegated to the role of pumping by blood and nothing else, for it has proven untrustworthy with other responsibilities. And it felt scary, this pull, as though I might drown.

“Oliver!” He called, a small smile on his face.

“Elio,” I panted as I came to stop in front of him before allowing myself to collapse beside him.

“Still running every day?” He raised his hand as if to pluck at my sweaty shirt and then dropped it. “No wonder you’ve become so thin.” A smile managed to find its way onto my lips - I knew it was weak and small, mirroring how I felt about myself - not like the large expansiveness, the infinity of emotion I felt for Elio, that summer, then, and now, always.

He shifted, bending one leg and placing it on the bench, turning his body so it was angled in a welcome. I wordlessly dropped beside him and lifted the hem of my t-shirt, an old thing, worn to nearly holes in places, not unlike me, to wipe the sweat from my brow and upper lip. I looked over at Elio and noticed him studying me, an inscrutable expression on his face, his lips pulled to one side as he chewed at the corner of his mouth on the other. Years had passed. I was, by then, no longer a card player, but a poker-man never forgets the tells of the men he plays against, the men from whom he hopes to win something - whether by truly holding the winning hand or by tricking them. At that point I wasn’t sure by what means I had won what I had from Elio that summer. I had long feared I had bluffed my way into his heart and he surely had realized that mine was a losing hand since. What I didn’t understand then, and which I continue to learn every day now, is that what I received was freely given. There was no winner, because there was no loser.

“How are you liking Julliard, the City?” I let my eyes fill with the light of a summer sun five years past, felt like the rusty Tin Man as the corners of my lips, atrophied from disuse, crinkled into a genuine smile. I let the time and space between us be filled by Elio’s words, his stories, like sirens’ song, from which I could not turn away, had I even wanted to.

He spoke of his time adjusting to the difference between an undergraduate liberal arts course of study and the specialized study of a doctoral program. He spoke of his telephone call with his parents that morning and the advice they had given him about this transition. He told of some friends he had made. He reminisced about his friends from his undergraduate program, some who were friends only, and some who were lovers only, and some who were both. Some who were women and some who were men. As he revealed parts of himself he searched by eyes, perhaps looking for judgment. He always cared far too much what I thought. Oh Elio, you goose, I could never, would never judge you. The entirety of judgment I have was reserved for myself and even then, I feared it is far too little, much less than I deserved.

The cool morning began to warm with the sun’s journey through the sky and I felt warmed from the inside by my personal god of the sun. However, the soul and body do not always communicate, and as my sweat cooled on my skin, I bit the inside of my lip to keep from shivering visibly, clenched my teeth together to keep them from chattering, anything to keep Elio from noticing and having more excuse, beyond what limited enjoyment my company must have given him, to cut our time together short. I do not think he noticed my physical discomfort that day, after all, I had years of practice with bluffing, both at the poker table and beyond. But eventually, far too soon, even though it had been over an hour, Elio jumped up.

“I forgot I promised to meet some classmates downtown!” He ran his hand nervously through his hair and I assumed he was nervous about a poor impression on his new friends if he was late. I stood up as well and helped him gather his things. I held a notebook in my hand, in which he had been scribbling when I had run upon him, offered it to him much in a poor imitation of how I wished I could have offered him more of myself, all of myself, that summer, or after, or even that morning. He glanced at it in my hand and then his eyes lit up and he reached in his backpack for a pen and held it out to me. “Would you please write down your phone number?”

I felt in that moment reborn, given a second chance, and my heart pounded as it had during my run earlier. I flipped to a fresh page and wrote down “212-663-4543 - Oliver” and hesitated a moment before adding “call anytime” and then handed it back to him. He hardly glanced at it before nodding several times and closing the notebook, pushing the cover and pages alongside the wire spiral binding until it was all even and flat, and then shoved the notebook into his backpack.

We looked at each other and just as I was about to offer my hand to him, he clasped me by my shoulders and kissed me on each cheek, his lips hardly a whisper against my skin but I knew I would feel them there forever as though I had been tattooed.

The next days passed as they always did. My routine was both comforting and stifling. Only now, there was a layer added to it, a pining, a desire to sit by the phone, feelings that I had missed out on in my teenage years but life was somehow determined to ensure I experienced nonetheless. It felt lighthearted in a way that I had not felt in years, five and half to be exact but no one else was counting, and ridiculous. I both wished I had asked for Elio’s number and was grateful I had not. As difficult as waiting was, having to make a decision would have felt worse. And that knowledge ate away at me. What sort of a man was I that I would not pick up the phone to call someone to whom I wished to speak?

In the darkest moments, usually as I would lie awake at night, my blanket twisted from my tossing and turning, forming a noose around my waist, I would remind myself that he may not call at all.

Until one Sunday morning, before I left for my run, the phone rang. My heart jumped. No one called me, save for telemarketers and those calls were reserved for weekday evenings, not Sundays when all were presumed to be with family and at church.

“Hello,” I said, cautiously, into the receiver. Chances were that it was a wrong number.

“Oliver? Oliver is that you?” Pro’s voice came booming into my ear, a joyful noise, followed by Annella’s sweeter tones. “Oh, Oliver, how are you?”

“Elio had mentioned he ran into you and we asked him to get your number if he ever saw you again,” Pro explained.

“You moved and didn’t give us your new number, Oliver,” Annella chided gently.

“Of course, I’m so glad he did.” My heart resumed its normal rate quickly. We settled in to chat about how they had been and about my courses for this semester. Pro offered helpful advice on facing the Everest that is one’s sophomore book, something I would need to conquer to tie a bow on my application for tenure.

After some time, the conversation began to wind down, naturally, no one forcing it, no one wishing to be someplace else. My run could wait, patiently, as the season progressed the mornings were colder and there was no reason to rush out the door.

As we began the process of saying good-bye, which with the Perlmans could take half the length of the conversation thus far, the universe gave me a gift. As though it believed in second chances, even for the undeserving. I realized that running into Elio by happenstance in a city as large as ours, might not happen again. Perhaps the universe was giving me a fourth chance, to be more accurate. “Uh, Pro, would you mind, and if you don’t think Elio would mind, giving me his number? I forgot to ask for it when we saw each other.”

“And you would rather not wait on Fortune to give you what has already been given at least once?” I nodded although he could not see me.

“Certamente, Ulliva, un momento, per favore,” Annella’s voice sang over the line. I heard some shuffling of papers and then a number recited to me, which I copied down and recited back, a call and response, not unlike a prayer.

After several minutes of good-byes, be wells, ciaos, speak soons, and don’t be a strangers, we hung up. I stared at the receiver. “To speak or die,” I whispered. I swallowed past a lump in my throat that may have been Sisyphus’ rock, it was so big, heavy, and familiar, and picked up the receiver once more. With sweaty fingertips, I dialed and listened to the ring.

“Pronto? Oh, I mean, hello?” Elio’s voice suddenly made my apartment, lonely and cold, a place where I could see the autumn sunlight sneaking her way across the floor.

“Elio? It’s Oliver. Hello. I was calling - I wanted to ask. Would you like to go to dinner sometime?”

December 1988 / January 1989

Noises from the New Year’s party I had left behind trickled up to the roof before I heard the door slam shut. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Elio approaching me as I turned back to my view of the other neighborhood warehouses.

He placed a hand on my shoulder, still warm from being indoors, packed shoulder-to-shoulder with the other revelers, and it was welcome as the night was cold and crisp. “Is it too much?”

“No - no, it’s not, I told you it wouldn’t be,” I insisted. The lie wasn’t a full one, it was too much but not for the reasons Elio assumed.

Over the past two months we had seen each other with increasing frequency. Dinners with Elio became the one part of my week that broke my carefully built routine and as with most delicately constructed facades, moving one brick threatened to topple the whole thing. As so it went for me.

These bright spots existed in stark contrast the rest of my life and made me more aware than ever how empty and dull it was. Safe, but at what cost?

And slowly our dinners expanded and I began to meet the friends Elio had made in the city, not only his classmates, but the artists he befriended. Drag queens, activists, those who had learned from history what happens when no one stands up. Those who were fighting with their last dying breath. Those that were burying lovers and using the last of their own energy, not for themselves but for those who might still be saved. My life was suddenly painted, not with the hazy languid colors of an Italian summer, but bright vivid colors of pop street art. The colors of Haring and Basquiat and of the flowers in Marsha’s hair and a quilt woven together of coffin-sized panels, soaked in love.

Elio collected friends the way one might collect mugs from the airports in various cities one visits. Mismatched but all belonging together. One might think I would be out of place with them but getting to know Elio, who he was now, both through time spent together and through those with whom he chose to surround himself, helped me to know myself and, through knowing myself, find my place. An ordinary mug, but a mug nonetheless, inscribed simply with “Somewhere in Italy.”

But I could read the worry framing Elio’s eyes each time I was out with the others. My words from the first time we met again, _I’m not...like that,_ forever seared between us, a burn that had healed with time but leaving nasty scar tissue that prevents one from ever forgetting the injury and, with it, the cause of the injury. His eyes, relaxed when happy, hooded when satiated (I could never, would never forget even if I had doomed myself to never getting to see him that way again, never getting to make him feel that way again, if I had ceded those rights to another, to other lovers), were hard rimmed and steely as my punishment for careless words.

The more I experienced myself as truly fitting in somewhere, with someone, with a community, the way I never had in academia, or with my family, or with the types of people it was expected I would live my life surrounded by, the more I regretted those words. The more I began to suspect I was _like that._ At least when it came to Elio.

Celibacy had never been a problem for me. I was so compartmentalized and that was simply a compartment I had designed my life to ignore, save for the odd dates with women when I would sigh with feigned reluctance about respecting them until we lost touch after the third or fifth date when it would be expected that despite my respect for them, my longing would overtake me.

I once again understood poetry and music, not at the intellectual level that I was learned in and taught others the same, but at that deep soul level at which I could feel. I had only experienced this once before and it did not take a genius of Elio’s caliber to guess when. I felt pangs of longing whenever I was not with him. I was suddenly distracted by images and thoughts drenched with those feelings I had given such short slack to before. All at once I was fighting myself in a way that I had not had to do for so long. I had thought the war was won, but it turned out it had only been the battle. I had been reminded of why the Trojans and Spartans had fought and knew I too would do the same for this fair face surrounded by a dark frame.

At the time I believed my feelings went unreturned and that I had served myself with a lifetime sentence of being near enough to Elio but unable to touch. I imagined not only did he not want me but there must be many others, of all genders, throwing themselves at him. Even if I had not ruined any chance I had, what would he want with me, when he could have any of the fantastic colorful works of art he was surrounded by? Denied his touch, I permitted myself a rich fantasy life, finally understanding the urges that other men joked about. I tried to maintain a respect for the boundaries of friendship I presumed Elio wanted, creating arbitrary rules against touching myself on days surrounding when we saw each other. Rules I inevitability had to break as he would bid me greeting and farewell with a tender kiss to each cheek, his silk-soft pink lips brushing against my skin, lighting it on fire, and my nose filled with the scent of warmth that was only his and tickled by the ends of his curls.

I would only later learn how much he longed for me in those days. How he matched me feeling for feeling, fearing that it had been too late for us. That he kept himself from others as any attraction he might feel was tinged with pale pastels compared with the bright and vivid relief of his feelings for me. But only later, after doubts between us in the present had been erased and there was time enough to erase the doubts of the past, he would confess this.

He had invited me to this New Year’s party and warned me, in a way that I had begun to resent but felt I deserved, of the cast of characters who would be present. I had left for some air, not due to the company, or rather not due to any of the company except Elio’s. Everyone had been dancing pressed together and I did not trust myself to be good. We were friends only.

“I just needed a breath of fresh air,” I explained, not elaborating that the real breath of fresh air entered my lungs the moment he joined me on the rooftop.

He nodded. We began to hear the countdown to the new year.

“You better go,” I urged, “so you can kiss someone at midnight.”

Start the year as you intended to live it, is the expression I had heard.

“There’s no one I want to kiss,” Elio’s eyes looked up at me, a different worry, a softer one, framed them along with his impossibly long lashes. “No one else.”

I was certain I had misheard that last part, that I was hallucinating what I hoped to be the case but I knew could never be. I was certain that I had finally detached from reality altogether. And if I was finally living within a fantasy of my own mind’s creation, with nothing left to lose, as the crowd screamed, “ONE! HAPPY NEW YEAR!” and somewhere others sang about old acquaintances, I leaned down and pressed a chaste kiss to Elio’s lips.

January 1989

Elio’s mouth, warm and wet, in contrast to the dry cold surrounding us, pressed back against mine and opened to me for a beautiful moment. Or was it minutes? Time had ceased to exist. He returned the kiss although eventually he pulled away, panting slightly, his eyes glistening. I couldn’t tell if it was from the reflection of the city lights or tears.

“Oliver,” he whispered. I shook my head gently. “Elio,” he whispered and I let out a cry and allowed myself to be caught in his arms, stronger than they looked, strong enough to hold me.

“Oliver,” I whispered. I could barely hear my own voice over the shouts of the partygoers in the streets and across the city but I could feel him nod against my chest. We stood like that until the wind whipping around us could no longer be ignored.

We stood in the stairwell, just inside the door, and I held his face in my hands and brushed my thumbs over his cheekbones, flushed from the cold and, I dared to hope, something more, some warmth from within. He spoke first, he had to, I had forgotten all words except my name which was once again his. “Do you want this?”

“It’s all I have ever wanted,” and in that moment I knew it was true. I had wanted my career, my studies, my freedom but none of it mattered, it was all a half-life, without love. Without Elio.

And I had to ask, my voice rough from the cold, rough from wanting, “And you, is this what you want?”

“I want you Oliver,” he said simply. And then, “I want a chance at a real life with you. What we had in Italy was - “

“A fairy tale,” I supplied. I had a feeling I knew what he was asking for - a chance to be a real couple - the type that finish each other’s sentences. I felt the corners of my mouth creep up.

“And fairy tales have endings,” he concluded. I grinned down at him and he continued, “I want to try at something that has no ending, that is not always beautiful, that is mundane, and that is sometimes difficult.”

I pulled him close, held him to my heart, once more beating in harmony to live, not just avoid death, and whispered, “I know just the thing.”

May 1989

We dated the next several months. Our dinners together ended with kissing, pressing up against walls in alleys, legs slotted between legs. I invited him over, finally, and he saw where I had made my home. I cooked for him - not as good as Mafalda but better than he could manage on his own was his verdict. We spent afternoons in museums, nights at the theater, up in the cheap seats, and mornings searching out the best coffee on the island.

The rhythm my heart had beat on New Year’s Eve, became the melody of my days. I felt alive anew - each feeling more vibrant than I had ever experienced. And with the beauty of falling in love all over again, came facing fear on a daily basis.

Fear was an emotion so familiar but it had always been a solitary experience. Now my fear existed in relationship to Elio - fear he would discover who I truly was and leave me, and, more than that, detest me, feel disgusted he had wasted so much as a second with me. I tried to keep my need for reassurance to myself, for it was I who had hurt him, not the other way around. And yet his patience with me was infinite. He seemed determined to love me until I could see myself reflected in his eyes, how he saw me. And Elio has always been the most stubborn man I know.

He had far less patience with my fears of walking down the street, hand in hand, of kissing him too close to the sidewalk, of being seen for what we were. I had admired and felt at home in the family Elio had found himself in, felt welcomed as one of their own, but also existed within a world in which I had hidden and could hide. Elio had no interest in hiding, to him the risks of refusing to hide our love were outweighed, by far, by the beauty that just by loving and being loved, we were changing the world.

We fought, not infrequently, and with bitter words, accusations, and raised voices. But I never doubted it was worth it, for we came back together, each time we fought, plus one. Every time I was certain something between us was shattered, Elio showed me that we did not have to put the pieces back together and try to recreate what was, we could take those pieces and make something new, something more beautiful and stronger.

It was several months before I invited him to stay the night, my voice shaking. But shaking with excitement, with want, no longer filled with dread and fears of disgusting him. No longer disgusted myself with what my body craved.

And that night I finally truly understood that what we had created was more beautiful than what we had. Our kisses that night went beyond anything we had shared because they were the kisses given and received without the pressure of deadline. My mouth finding its way to the most intimate of places, wanting to taste every bit of Elio, wanting to know him with every sense as I now knew him as a person. Wanting to trace every freckle with my tongue, imprint his fingerprints on my lips, and map each scar and learn every story recorded on his body.

After he showered, before going home, he stood in the doorway of my bedroom, towel tied around his narrow hips. I gazed at him, one arm tucked behind my head, the other resting on the softest part of my belly, as though protecting myself from his departure. I didn’t want to move from the sheets that had held his body, captured his scent, absorbed his fluids.

He studied me for a moment and then, “I’m leaving in a few weeks, to visit my parents.” I don’t know what expression came over my face, I know I felt shocked. The order of the words, “I’m leaving in a few weeks” started a loud rushing noise in my ears and I almost missed the second part. My nerves were suddenly alight, irritated by the slight roughness of the bedsheet below me, chilled by the soft summer air coming through the window. I had heard the second part but it is hard to walk back the panic once you’ve been pushed to the edge of the cliff. Whatever he saw on my face, the next words came as a rush, provoked by a clear need to reassure me once more. “And I would like you to come.”

My chest rose and fell, my heart found once more a steady rhythm, and I smiled. “Is that invitation from you or from your parents?”

His lips drew in a pout and I nearly jumped out of bed to pounce on him one more time, but I knew I shouldn’t tempt him. He hadn’t planned to stay the night. It was too soon. And his roommates would worry as he inspired love and loyalty in all those who had the fortune to meet him. He still does. “You can consider it an invitation from all three of us,” he said haughtily and then softened. “I would really like you there.... I know we said no fairy tales, but everyone needs an escape from reality now and then.”

“Someone should warn the peaches,” I smirked. He tossed his damp towel at me but laughed. I held it to my chest and watched him dress.

He bent over and kissed me gently on the lips. “Ciao, mi amore. I’ll lock up behind myself.”

July 1989

One of our final evenings at the villa, we waited for the sun to set and the mosquitos to disperse. Mafalda packed us a basket - wine, cheeses, bread, fruits, and olives - and we rode our bikes to the berm. We had been there several times during our stay already but it was our first time there at night. My heart remained beating quickly even after we dismounted and spread the blanket on the grass and opened the wine. We had not brought glasses, intending to simply pass it back and forth between us.

Fear had been a constant companion most of my life but this fear took a different shape. The anxiety of anticipation. The nerves of hope. We were remaining steadfast in our love and the world was, slowly, turning to meet us.* Elio had given that to me. I wanted to give him my life, something that less than a year before had seemed worth nearly nothing, but with him by my side, I was learning to value more each day.

We sat back on our elbows and I turned to look at him. “I don’t want you to leave.”

Elio sighed, “Oliver, I -”

I put a finger to his lips and kept talking. “I don’t want you to leave, ever again. I don’t want to spend a single night apart from you.” My sweaty trembling hands pushed a key into his. “Move in with me?”

“Ol-Oliver,” he whispered. I shook my head slightly and grinned. “Elio, Elio, Elio” he said with growing confidence.

“Oliver,” I answered.

We kissed and there was no ending.

**Author's Note:**

> *Paraphrased from a quote from Coronation Street "It is eleven years since we last registered to be married and we were informed that we could not. We have remained still and the world has turned to meet us. My message to you, Hayley, is this. The world can change its rules, its laws and its opinions, as frequently as it chooses, but I will remain standing beside you. That will not change."


End file.
